Quote:
Originally Posted by pektel
Made the first batch last night.
Tried one at like 5 this morning. BAM got hit with a huge blast of tang/flavor. I'm guessing they only get stronger. I may add a little more water to tone it down a little. Beause honestly, I can't remember for SURE putting in 1.5C water (I halved the recipe due to the amount of cucumber slices I wound up with).
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Unlike fermented pickles which will continue to get more sour as they sit in the fermenter because the live lactobacillus will continue to make the brine more sour, vinegar pickles typically won't get any more sour once the flesh is saturated because the brine is at a fixed / constant pH.
For thin slices, this can occur in a little as a few hours, especially if you used boiling brine.
You don't want to take the acid level down too low as you need to have a certain acidity and saline level when making refrigerator pickles so that they absorb the herbs/spice flavors, don't become unsafe to eat through bacterial contamination, and are preserved. 1:1 with typical distilled white vinegar is already getting low, a bit more water is probably ok, but a lot would turn these from pickles to cucumbers in spiced water.
Besides water dilution, you can also add white sugar to the vinegar-salt brine to cut the bite.